Sparring continues over testimony in Puerto Rican club shooting

Combative testimony continued Friday in the trial of two men charged in a chaotic fatal gun battle two years ago outside a Puerto Rican social club in Bethlehem.

With the prosecution's star witness on the stand for part of a second day, defense attorneys resumed grilling Orialis Figueroa over his account of the 2012 firefight, arguing that he was the aggressor and not the victim early that morning.

It is up to a Northampton County jury to decide who is to blame in the shootout that authorities have labeled one of the Lehigh Valley's worst. On trial are two defendants, Javier Rivera-Alvarado and Rene Figueroa, who are accused of a score of felonies in a melee that left one woman dead and five other people injured near the South Side's Puerto Rican Beneficial Society.

Prosecutors say Orialis Figueroa was the good guy early Dec. 2, 2012, fighting off the defendants to protect himself and his family despite gunshot wounds to both of his legs.

But as testimony resumed on Day 3 of the trial, Rivera-Alvarado's attorney, Edward Andres, continued to press Orialis Figueroa over his description of events.

Andres noted that by the witness' own telling, Orialis Figueroa bashed Rivera-Alvarado over the head with a baseball bat and fired a gun multiple times at a fleeing Rene Figueroa, who is of no relation to Orialis.

"Are you proud?" Andres asked the witness of the shots he acknowledged firing at Rene Figueroa.

"Yeah, I'm proud now," Orialis Figueroa replied. "He can do it to me, but I can't do it to him?"

Pointing across the courtroom to the audience, the 30-year Easton man noted his brother, Angel Figueroa, who was seated in the motorized wheelchair he must use after being paralyzed by a bullet. Both brothers have identified Rene Figueroa as his shooter.

"Look at what he did to my brother," Orialis Figueroa said.

The defendants, both of Allentown, were among the six people shot. But prosecutors insist they were the perpetrators, and Rene Figueroa could face the death penalty if convicted of murdering 23-year-old Yolanda Morales of Bethlehem, who was gunned down that morning.

The defense says it was Orialis Figueroa who started the melee and whose own reckless gunfire killed Morales. Orialis Figueroa proved a feisty witness during his lengthy testimony, with Judge Anthony Beltrami twice forced to warn him Friday not to swear.

"Sir, sir," Beltrami interrupted the second time. "You may not use curse words in the courtroom."

Rene Figueroa's attorney, Jack McMahon, has mocked Orialis Figueroa to the jury as "our local hero," saying the story he and his relatives told police is a "total fabrication."

The shooting occurred after a minor incident in the East Third Street club spilled into the street, police have said. It created a crime scene so complicated that investigators had to draw diagrams to make sense of what happened.

Orialis Figueroa testified that he had gone to his van to get a baseball bat for protection when Rivera-Alvarado sneaked up behind him and placed a handgun to his head.

In the anarchy that ensued, Orialis Figueroa said he was able to knock Rivera-Alvarado unconscious with the bat and grab the gun, though not before his assailant shot at least him and Morales.

It was Rene Figueroa who killed Morales, grabbing her, spinning her around and shooting her in the back, Orialis Figueroa said.

On Friday, a cousin of his, Edwin Colon, testified that he witnessed much of events described by Orialis Figueroa, though the defense suggested Colon's story was shaped by his family considering that he didn't talk to police until two months after the shooting.

Colon, 40, of Easton said that after the gunfire stopped, he tended to his wounded relatives and found Morales lying facedown in the street.

"I went over to Yolanda and flipped her over," Colon said. "Checked her pulse, but she didn't have none. She was dead."

Not long before, Morales had been outside the club with a friend of hers, Jazelia Calderon of Easton, when they heard sounds "sort of like fireworks" and ran up the street.

Calderon, 24, said she was frightened to notice a man knocked out and lying on the ground, looking like he needed "serious medical attention." She looked across the sidewalk and saw a second man, who pulled a gun, pointed it into the air and fired off a round, she said, before she ran and hid.

McMahon highlighted that the second man — identified by other witnesses as his client — shot into the air, and only after seeing Rivera-Alvarado prone.

He also asked Calderon whether she would have run up the street if she had heard gunfire coming from there — a key question since the defense has argued that Rivera-Alvarado never had a gun, and was merely beaten up by Orialis Figueroa.

"You at that time … had not perceived anything in the way of gunshots, correct?" McMahon said, discounting her mention of fireworks.

"Correct," Calderon replied.

The trial comes as authorities say they foiled a plot by Rene Figueroa and his wife, Sonia Panell, to kill witnesses in his case including Orialis and Angel Figueroa — charges that have captured headlines as much as the initial shooting.

Beltrami has ruled the prosecution can introduce those allegations as evidence, after First Deputy District Attorney Terence Houck argued that the alleged plot helps show that Rene Figueroa knows he is guilty.

Rivera-Alvarado and Rene Figueroa face charges that include attempted murder, conspiracy and aggravated assault, though only Figueroa is charged with homicide.